Jeremy Bartlett's LET IT GROW blog

The wonder of plants and fungi.

The Garden At The Belvedere Centre (2)

Posted on 3 April, 2012 by Jeremy Bartlett17 January, 2016

Since the last piece I wrote about the Belvedere Centre (22 January 2012) we have done a lot of work. First of all we built a wire mesh leafmould bin and cleared up the fallen leaves from the garden. Then we spent several days weeding the shady southern border and the west facing sunny border, taking out old tree roots in the process.

We bought some shrubs for the shady border – Fatsia japonica and Aucuba japonica. These both have decorative foliage and will tolerate quite dense shade. We also added a few Aubretia and variegated thyme plants to the front of the sunny border. Within minutes of planting a Bee-fly found the Aubretia flowers and a week later the flowers are proving popular with bumblebees.

Then it was time to order a large batch of hardy perennials from Howard Nurseries of Wortham, which we’ve planted in the last couple of days. The plants were delivered yesterday lunchtime and Vanna and I dealt with most of the bare-rooted plants yesterday afternoon. Then today ten of us planted the rest of the batch and by the end of the two days we’d planted and watered in over 400 plants.

Luckily the soil has quite a lot of clay in it so we should only need to water once a week, or less if we get some decent rain. With a hosepipe ban and no outside tap anyway, we need to do all the watering with watering cans, which is a slow process.

Our work has been accompanied by a Robin and a pair of Blue Tits, both nesting in or near the garden. The Belvedere Centre staff, busy as ever, have helped us with the gardening and supplied us with tea, biscuits and cake and filled up cans of water for us.

Next we need to work on the centre of the garden and on the western border, but for now we can be pleased with what we’ve done and look forward to seeing our plants begin to flower.

Read the next update about the garden.

Weeding the west-facing border

Perennials ready to plant

Planting perennials

Preparing the shady border for more planting

Planting in the shady border

List of perennials planted in last two days:

Achillea ‘Moonshine’
Agastache rugosa ‘Liquorice White’
Allium senescens glaucum
Anemone huphensis ‘Praecox’
Aquilegia ‘Red Star’
Asplenium scolopendrium Undulatum Group
Aster amellus ‘Rosa Erfullung’
Aster pyrenaeus ‘Lutetia’
Aster x frikartii
Bergenia ‘Bressingham Ruby’
Carex flagellifera
Coreopsis rosea ‘American Dream’
Coreopsis verticillata ‘Golden Gain’
Crocosmia spp.
Cynoglossum nervosum
Dryopteris erythrosora
Echinops sphaerocephalus ‘Arctic Glow’
Erigeron ‘Dignity’
Eryngium variifolium
Geranium macrorrhizum ‘Pindus’
Geranium phaeum ‘Album’
Geranium sanguineum striatum
Geranium wallichianum ‘Buxton’s Variety’
Geranium x oxonianum ‘Wageningen’
Helichrysum ‘Schwefellicht’
Hemerocallis ‘Little Red Hen’
Hemerocallis ‘Stella de Oro’
Heuchera sanguinea ‘White Cloud’
Heucherella alba ‘Rosalie’
Iris foetidissima
Knautia macedonica
Lamium maculatum ‘Album’
Lamium maculatum ‘Orchid Frost’
Lavandula angustifolia ‘Little Lady’
Leucanthemum x superbum ‘Snowcap’
Lychnis coronaria ‘Alba’
Macleaya microcarpa ‘Kelways Coral Plume’
Miscanthus sinensis ‘Silberfeder’
Monarda ‘Snow Queen’
Nepeta racemosa ‘Walker’s Low’
Origanum vulgaris ‘Country Cream’
Persicaria affinis ‘Darjeeling Red’
Persicaria affinis ‘Donald Lowndes’
Persicaria amplexicaule ‘Rosea’
Phuopsis stylosa
Polystichum polyblepharum
Pulmonaria officinalis ‘Cambridge Blue Group’
Rhodiola rosea
Rudbeckia fulgida sullivantii ‘Goldsturm’
Salvia nemorosa ‘Ostfriesland’
Salvia x sylvestris ‘Mainacht’
Saxifraga umbrosa
Solidago ‘Ledsham’
Tellima grandiflora ‘Forest Frost’
Thalictrum isopyroides
Verbascum ‘Cotswold Queen’
Verbena bonariensis
Veronica longifolia ‘Blauer Sommer’
Waldsteinia geoides.

Entries in bold were planted in the shady border and / or centre of the garden. The rest were planted in the sunny border.

Moschatel, Adoxa moschatellina

Posted on 1 April, 2012 by Jeremy Bartlett17 January, 2016

The appearance of Moschatel, Adoxa moschatellina, is another sign of spring.

Moschatel, Adoxa moschatellina

Easily missed, this plant can be found in woodlands, where carpets the shady ground under the trees. The flowers are pale yellowish green and four are arranged at right angles to each other, with a fifth on top, like the faces of a town hall clock, so it is commonly called Townhall Clock. It flowers in late March or early April, giving it the alternative name of Good Friday plant and is a widespead and quite common UK native species, though it is easily overlooked. It also occurs in the rest of Europe and in North America, where it is called Muskroot. On a warm day the flowers give off a faint musky scent.

The leaves are light green and three lobed and remind me a bit of Wood Anemone or Columbine, thought Moschatel is in a different family, the Adoxaceae. They die down by early summer, so there is no trace of the plant above the ground.

I first noticed this plant in the woods near Earlham Park in Norwich about 25 years ago but my favourite location is not far from Reedham Ferry, in a small wood to the south of the River Yare. It was just coming into flower when I looked for it a few days ago.

New Zealand Pigmyweed, Crassula helmsii

Posted on 30 March, 2012 by Jeremy Bartlett17 January, 2016

The Crassulaceae is a family of mostly succulent plants. British native plants in the family include stonecrops (Sedum species), Wall Pennywort (Umbilicus rupestris) and Roseroot (Rhodiola rosea), which are adapted to well-drained soil, such as cliffs and walls.

New Zealand Pigmyweed removal, Swweetbriar Marshes, 2012

New Zealand Pigmyweed removal, Sweetbriar Marshes, 2012

The New Zealand Pigmyweed, Crassula helmsii, differs from the above members of the family in two ways. Firstly, it grows in ponds and secondly, it is an introduced species from Australia and New Zealand, first introduced into the UK in 1911 as an oxygenating plant for garden ponds. It was first encountered in the wild in the UK in 1956 at Greensted Pond in Essex. It is very invasive and competes with native plants, often forming dense patches of growth where other plants can’t grow. There are pictures, a distribution map and more information on the GB Non-Native Species Secretariat’s website here.

We accidentally bought the plant twenty years ago from a garden centre, as an oxygenator for our back garden’s pond, but we identified it a few years later and managed to remove it all by hand and destroy it. This is difficult to do on a larger scale, as small, broken off pieces of the plant can root and grow.

We walk at Sweetbriar Marshes in Norwich every few weeks and, since our last visit, two ponds have been cleared of the plant and filled in to stop it from regrowing and spreading to other parts of the nature reserve. Five new ponds have been dug on another part of the marshes to provide alternative accomodation for wildlife. The former ponds are now fenced off and bear notices to inform visitors what is going on.

Frog and New Zealand Pigmyweed at Sweetbriar Marshes in 2010

Hopefully the new ponds will provide spawning grounds for frogs and toads. These used the old ponds, though with a couple of dry springs most of the amphibians seem to have decamped to nearby dykes, which remained full of water when the ponds dried out.

Filling in ponds to remove an invasive non-native species is drastic but sometimes necessary. New Zealand Pigmyweed is just one species that has been introduced by humans and done rather too well in its new home. Others are also covered by the GB Non-Native Species Secretariat’s website.